One More Little Look

Now that my wonderful Easter church service is a glorious memory, I'd like to go back for a brief nostalgic look at my childhood. First of all, we always got to go shopping for an Easter dress. I always wanted a nylon one because they were so colorful and pretty and the "in" thing. My mother didn't care for them for some reason. Finally, one year she gave in and we each could pick out our prettiest dress. When it came down to it, my sisters got nylon dresses, but I fell in love with a grey and pink flowered organdy dress. It was similar and not as scratchy. It turns out that I often seem to be wearing that dress in my favorite pictures. Every other year or so we would get the accessories like a new hat or new white gloves or patten leather shoes. (At the little shoe store, we always stuck our feet in an x-ray machine and saw our green bony feet. This was to see if the shoes were big enough.)

Another thing I loved was our Easter baskets. I can almost smell the chocolate of the bunnies we always received. Mom wasn't big on candy, but on Easter she pretty much let us eat what we liked, within reason. I usually had my bunnies ears off and part of the head before service. We also got lots of jelly beans, shiny turquoise, red, and yellow eggs called duck eggs. I loved these and I'm not sure they make them anymore. They are sort of marshmallowy with a hard candy shell. We also got little pom pom ball chicks with orange feet and cute little hats. I loved these and saved them from year to year.

We also took our yearly pictures out by the garden with my little sister squinting at the sun and me with lots of silly curls in my usually straight hair. Over the years I have made peace with nearly every picture, except one where I obviously had a brand new perm. Ohhh, it was bad.

In some ways, I loved wearing white gloves and Easter hats and doing a lot of this and that for the special day. It sure was a lot of fun. Now, I am glad that, even though I do a little dressing up and candy buying for little ones, the whole day just seems much more focused on the special meaning of the resurrection. I am happy about that.